Attention BA staff and shareholders

[Diesel]

L337

Yes sadly there is stilll the odd one out there. HOwever would you not say it's far rarer occurence than it used to be? And beyond that I suspect FC are leass amenable than in times gone by,,,,

Diesel

[Diverse]

swiss_tonni your right the generalised comments and nastiness from some of the cabin crew posts is unacceptable but then again generalised comments and nastiness back isn't going to help, is it.


Your right 'of course' that you could train a lot of people to do the cabin crew job over night to replace us. If you can get on with it because there are record numbers of people leaving, your going to need them, perhaps if we'd trained a few folk over night the company wouldn't be in this mess.

[openfly]

I worked for BA, as flight crew, for many years.
I am now in business and fly considerably as a premium passenger on both long and short haul flights. I am now in a position to take a long look at the quality of service in the cabins of various carriers.
Believe me, I try to see BA in a better light, but I am finding it increasingly difficult.
Flying on Virgin in Upper Class is a pleasure...apart from the dreadful seats! The cabin crew make me feel welcome and seem to enjoy their job. They work hard at the product, from check-in to the limo. They are consistently good.
Flying on BA can be BAD. It appears that many CC in BA think they are sheer perfection ... the bad news is that they are not. There are a lot of arrogant, lemon-suckers in the cabin. I am the nuisance that is stopping them getting to their crew bunks. They seem to lose sight of the fact that I am paying a lot for my Club/First seat.
But, there are also some EXCELLENT BA cabin crew out there. I flew to JNB last week and the southbound crew were superb, in every way. Coming back was appalling....totally disinterested, not a smile anywhere, a request for a de-caf coffee greeted with a grunt, a shambles of a meal service, nothing cleared away etc etc etc. I bet they were on a massive long-sector payment as well. The CSD didn't show his face once on the upper deck.
So, back to Virgin for the next trip.
BA cabin-crew must realise that there is another world out there...an inferior one, to the one they know. Carry on like this and that is where they will be.
Maybe I am just an old fart share-holder who expects too much!

[ThS]

swiss_tonni

First of all, yeah it's sad that bitterness and hard word are spoken here, but when you come across people like yourself, who's got NO idea what you are talking about, then we/I have to speak up..

If I have offended anyone on here, I'm sorry!

Then you wrote this:

You are replaceable. A maximum of five days training would get the SEP out of the way. That would provide a minimum service. Dont delude yourselves.

Would LOVE to see what kind of crew you would get in 5 days training.
Again it seems like that you and some others here, actually have NO idea about what the job is all about..

There are people, like myself and others who takes pride in what they do.. and does it well. Som for 30 years and some for a few.

Then coming across ignorent people working for the same company.. ?????

was it United we stand???? in this case...

then dear swiss... you come on with this...

Also, dont put yourselves on too high a pedestal, the rest of the company do not see you in the same light as you do in your grooming mirrors at Compass Centre. If there is any threat of a dispute, you will get NO support from outside your little world.

well, I look VERY good in my mirror.. LOL

BUT that comment sort of explaines why I feel like I'm from Mars when I come into Waterworld/Latteland.

HARDLY ever being met by a hello, or just a friendly look from men/women in suits.. more or less like a piece of dirt..
(except from the lovely people in the cantine, when I buy myself a latte!)

So turn this back to you swiss_tonni, what happend to manners of being polite?... a smile will take you a mile!

LAST on here..

I agree with we got the best and the worst of CC.. mostly VERY good.. asked a few people around.. and said which is the BEST airline to fly with and most people said BA.

If you take away the asian carriers, in the sense they are like robots.. no real human contact.. can't really joke and have a laugh with them.. in the sense you can with a western carrier.. then I think we are doing very well.

[heavy crew]

Hello ricky.
May I tackle some of your points please.

Yes I accept that the CAA slapped down IFS training, and quite right too.

The company had the csd's talking for 12 minutes about business issues and how the service will be done and other secondary crap.

Top and bottom don't dream that IFS training wish for us to hold our own licences, why would they? it is commited cabin crew that are sick of the shortcommings that IFS safety demonstrate that do.

The breifing is IMHO the place to consider recent SEP changes and refresh the whole teams knowledge of That perticular A/C type, what it has to do with club meals, I never understood and am glad to see the end of that.

The reason I would like to see individual licences is that each crew member would be more responsible for their role, after all it is not every flight by far, but sometimes crew do not properly check their equipment, on one flight a crew member pressed the evac button not the horn silence button, cabins are not correctly secured.

These are mistakes that are made because of carelessness, if the crew each had a licence then these things could be recorded and if someone does not give a Fig or consistantly scrapes by or fails annual check then it can be dealt with.

I hear a lot of waffle on here, by my best mate toni for one, that I can be replaced in five days, well that may be so, but not by somebody who is as committed and that has the experience levels that I do.

I certainly, over my carreer, have never met a pilot that does not wish to have only alert, experienced, inteligent well organised and led cabin crew dealing with the day to day behind the locked door, let alone when it all goes horribly wrong.

Individual licencing would be a solid step in the right direction.

20,000 aplications for 300 places oh please did you think this statement up before you got out of bed

In the headdy succesful days just after privatisation with unemployment running at over 10% BA cabin crew would beat about a seventy people to each place are you saying that is still the case HA HA come on.

I know for a fact that we are really struggleing to recruit suitable aplicants, this is generally well known if you wish I will find out the exact figures.

Glad to see that you have nothing to say about the huge amount leaving however, or perhaps that is a figment of my imagination too.

Your quote "But they also work six sector days. "

But how many flying hours and is it safe, the top and bottom is that Ryan earn about 25K I as I am sure you don't either have any Idea what the total flying hours are for their cabin crew.

I have recently had a huge, and very enjoyable debate about the missconception that BA cabin crew are underworked I must say that I am at what is generally considered to be the easiest base work wise for BA cabin crew, yet it suprised all of the piots that last year I did 991 FLYING HOURS, this is not that big a deal as I expext to get well above the thousand this year.

If any carrier is doing considerably more than this it must be a safety issue after all I am sure there are pilots doing less than half my hours and the guys that do over 800 are, rightly, considered to work perhaps too hard, and lets not forget that I am at what is considered London's easiest fleet.

Top and botom sectors are not everything, personally I would like to change to the same system as the pilots, I just wonder if the extra flexibility can outweigh the extra Hours I am doing to the company.

I think as regards to your benchmarking statement you will find that Air France do work out about the same as us, yet they all work part time, lufthansa well we will have to look at that one.

After all on one of the other forums I frequent we have people who partners work for lufthansa and they feel that it would be slightly less for the juniors loads more for the Pursers but no CSD so we couldn't compare like with like there.

Again they efectively work part time comparitively.

Lets be honest about this ol' benchmark thing, There have been many quarters, flight crew included, that feel it is a great tool to beat cabin crew with, well as each year goes by cabin crew get cheaper as the old contracts leave or retire, look in the mirror and ask if that is true of your department?

If not perhaps its only a matter of time till this whole arguement comes back and like a junk yard dog bites the hand that once petted it.


Ahh Good ol Toni,

Hello again, I would like to add to my collegue THS.

As is usual with you waterside dwellers you talk about Box payments yet have no idea what exactly they are and who gets them.

The majority of cabin crew never see them as they are a long range payment, and lets be honest how many times do you guys stay working for over 25hrs.

I say 25 as it is generally accepted that working one hour at altitude is equivalent to 2 on the ground.

I will explain so you can correct your collegues, in latte land, box payments are earned, only really by LHR WW crew they are paid for planned duties in excess of 12.30 at night or 13hrs in the day.

Silly, is it not that all your comments are aimed at a fraction of the crew community still I suppose if the management don't understand the basics in cabin crew it goes to show that it is no shock you feel we are all overpaid and underworked.

To be candid toni you asked "Do you actually know any positions that are surplus to requirements? "

Yes yours and all the suits like you, as you have no idea what you are talking about as regards the day to day running of this airline.

The biggest mistake was moving all the managers away from the coalface as they have lost sight of what we actually do.

Face it toni I take 5 days to train a replacement you don't need replacing we can do without you and yours, after all you are doing no work as you are probably on your laptop working from home doing this forum

[heavy crew]

Openfly, firstly let me say that although there is a high possibility that you are b@llsh1t I will accept for the sake of arguement that you are not and your post is genuine.

I am deeply saddened to read some of your post especially as you are the kind of passinger that we should be working hard to keep.

I must agree that Virgin are very good and their cabin crew of course are good at what they do.

It is a shame that you are finding cabin crew with "lemon" attitudes, there is no excuse really.

The company is destroying Cabin services and morale is in the toilet, compounded by the fact that all cabin crew suffer from 6 of the 7 work related stresses, will never be an excuse for the CSD not walking their cabins especially premium ones.

It seems to me that a crew is generally as good or bad as the CSD That leads them, and in that case the CSD's you have flown with have let you down as they should have dealt with the crew in question, If a CSD can't do that they should be brought to book.

Sadly that has to be balanced against the fact that Virgin do have aprox 2.5 Cabin crew more on a 747 and that was before this one further fiasco.

How do they have 2.5 more eh well it works something like this .

Virgin have one more crew member but they dont have a first so the Galley op that is trapped in the galley in ba can help elsewhere also as we have a larger club cabin and that is more man power intensive I add a further half hence 2.5.

That is some advantage and with all good will in the world a tough one to overcome, it also makes us as crew more efficient benchmark wise but thats an arguement for another day.

I do feel however that CSD's are sometimes fighting with their hands tied between their backs as a great deal of the excellent cabin crew that lit up the cabins and inspired all the crew around them (lets be honest in the old days we had loads of them) seem to have left or are leaving.

As such the job of delivering that scintillating BA service, where the Pax all think that the crew fly together every week, as they gell so well together, has become harder to deliver, after all you have to make an omlette with the eggs at hand.

This is a depressing way to end this post as I am usually an upbeat guy, so one thing I will say however is that we are getting some good new crew however, so the future is not totally black, lets just hope we can keep them.

Just one small point do you think the Virgin crew loved you and the BA crew all had faces like lemons because you always travel with an open fly?

[Basil Smallpiece]

What on earth is a 'CSD'? Isn't the Chief Steward/Stewardess called a Purser?

[FrozenATPL]

Swiss Tonni

Dear Swiss Tonni,

It seems to me THAT you are actually the bitter and twisted one.....

Pilots and Cabin Crew should work as a team - we need them as much as they need us!

Maybe you should put your name on the e-mail to Rod! The dinosaurs died because of their "brain size" - seems like the ICE AGE is knocking on your office door!

Have a lovely day! Next time I'll pay for your coffee (started to think yet?!?!)

Yours respectfully (if you still know the meaning of that word!)

FrozenATPL

[Anti-ice]

Exactly, you SO come over as the bitter and twisted one swissy - what is so fundementally wrong with your little life???

And you say we are replaceable , with a 5 day course . . . .mmmm - you really are on another planet .

As for you, well you may not need to be replaced - - your position is probably untenable, like so many around you, don't delude yourself.

We'll never know why you had to start this horrible little thread, but really all you've done is confirm the suspicions of many people within BA and outside.....
That you have totally distanced yourself into some precious little cocoon so far removed from the airline , that in effect you have no idea and really don't care what is going on on the frontline.

No doubt you strut around WTS like some self-important pr**k believing you are immune to the real goings on in the airline industry and the effect on your customers and colleagues.

BA would be a brilliant company again without people like you around, and if your idea of fun is to start something like this , perhaps you are best gone and long-forgotten.

BA used to be run by people with a passion for aviation and excellent customer service - till a load of self important wannabe's came along and (together with world events) ruined the hard work of previous years....

Bye - -Bye

[FrozenATPL]

Swiss Tonni

You need to realise that without the cabin crew WE wouldn't be doing the job we are doing....

We work together as a team!

Your statement just shows how "narrow" your views are.

You say - anybody could be trained up on SEP in 5 days! Ever heard of the little thing called CRM - or are you THE ONE that still to this day doesn't know what that means?

When I look at all your post on this forum (and on the others - or did you not realise that people know who you really are?....) it just shows: YOU HAVE NO RESPECT FOR ANYBODY BUT Y.O.U.R.S.E.L.F.! Your attitude is a slap in every pilots face and an insult to every cabin crew member.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our cabin crew for all the hard work they put in! We might loose sight of how hard that job actually is! I would and could not do it!
I've looked at our cabin crew members pay scales- and the wages are not "over the top". They reflect the price of the great customer service we give our passengers on a daily basis. It doesn't matter how "smooth" we land the plane (let's face it - it's our job and we get paid to do it!) - passengers always remember the service they received during the flight! Try flying with other airlines, you'll soon see what I mean!

You've just got to get over the fact that NO STEWARDESS would touch you with a 10 ft pole (anymore! I'm not talking about the one that ran off with 50 % of your pension!). Just get over it!

See you soon!

Your respectfully,

FrozenATPL

PS This might be my last post on pprune - because I'm just going to stand in the shadows and continue to watch over certain people!

[kfw]

Well how about ataster of box paymnets for CC ......

HKG LHR CSD £ 218.52 Main crew £ 135.41 plus £ 41.18 / hour over 12 hrs 30 for a CSD and £53.17 after 15 hours for this one sector , plus allowances plus basic salary .

No CC don't have licences but BA are thinking of introducing an operations certificate for CSDs .

This certificate will be valid for 12 mths and will need renewing by undertaking a line check which must be conducted by a CAA authorised examiner . Apparantly the only people on the a/c likely to be CAA examiners are Training Captains / F/Os . Ooops I'd better start being nice to them then . Sorry skip was it the fish or beef from First you wanted ?

Destination payment £ 62.66 back to back payment £170.83 but you didn't hear it from me Right ?

[sixmilehighclub]

chicken or beef, like it or lump it.....

Okay, I havent even started my crew training yet, and already I'm defensive!!

I have flown as pax with BA for years and whilst the large majority of crew are great, i agree there are some crew who do not always have smiles on their faces, but most of us humans are reasonable enough to understand its hard work, and not all nighstops and room parties, crew are only human too!!

I once worked for a low-cost start up which often entailed up to 70 sectors per month, 13 hour days, involved the crew cleaning the a/c on short turnarounds including toilets, walking out to the a/c, sleeping on the a/c seats in Ibiza airport for 5 hours on a split duty, helping with boarding, no crew food, sometimes helping unload the hold where the groundcrew had gone home for the night, operating 148 pax with minimum crew, operating a complex inflight service. But the crew always encouraged eachother to keep going, and laugh it off. The rumour starters and troublemakers were singled out and became friendless.

I flew transatlantic with another carrier following 9/11. They scared the pax around me, and myself with their boarding PAs, detailing the exact reasons for the delay due to enhanced security (too much information), they looked good but were unapproachable, unable to hold a conversation, offered appalling service and really seemed like they felt they were above all others. One girl got stroppy because a pax had stood up and knocked her hair out of place. My lifejacket was missing, I asked for one and I was looked upon like it wasnt my business to check!! So whose was it then???????? Everything was an effort.

I have wanted to work for BA for 25 years. I have dropped £15k in salary to take this job. The airline has changed but my passion hasnt. I hope that all the new entrants coming on line this year dont have their enthusiasm quoshed by negative comments made like those on here.

Encourage us please, so we can use that enthusiasm to try and make a small difference at least, even if its just to a handful of passengers a day.

[etrang]

6 mile high, good luck with your new job. I recommend that you try flying with CX or SQ to see a better type of CC srevice.

[ThS]

sixmilehighclub

welcome back to the world of CC.

Have to ask you, which comments on here are you angry or upset about?

The CC on this forum who is defending our world within BA?? or from the attackers from various places, even inside BA.??

swiss_tonni started this, and he works for us as one of the MANY managers within BA. (won't go down this path of .... again)

We, the CC are a great bunch of people, some are good, some are bad. But that's what you get in all kinds of jobs.

SO from a fellow CC, welcome and don't loose your spirit! you will love it..

and etrang

if you don't like us that much.. why don't you go and fly somewhere else?? it's pure and simple!

[Hotel Mode]

Hopefully got another 28 yrs with BA, so bit of a stakeholder and i have to say that what disturbs me in this thread is not the Cabin crew pay system. but the attitude that many of the CC on this thread are taking that if a passenger doesnt like it they can lump it. This is NOT how we are going to survive the next 5 years let alone 30. I know the customer isnt always right and whilst we give excellent service most of the time, there are a large number of our wage payers who think that some of our crew are aloof and unfreindly. Right or wrong thats the opinion they have developed and we should be trying to change their minds. The response of go and fly somewhere else is not helpful and you do your colleagues a great disservice.

[Calle Belle]

Swiss Toni...why all the vitriol? If as you state, cabin crew in BA are pampered and overpaid, why do you not apply for the position? You seem to think, all we do is swan around from continent to continent, being paid delsey full of money!
I appreciate all the background work done by admin staff. At the end of the day, we all need each other, we are all clogs in the big wheel, that enable it to turn, but surely, even YOU must see, and read, how top heavy we are in BA?
By airing your dirty washing on a public site such as this, all you have done is to prove, or should I say, highlight the divisions within BA.
Someone on an earlier reply said that prior to joining the cabin crew community within BA, he had worked at Waterside, and he could not believe the number of people wondering around doing nothing! This is coming from one of your own!
The fact that you have to post your comments via your friends pc, just goes to prove that you are nothing but a coward. (Though I have to say, your real name is now common knowledge!)
All you have managed to prove is...what a load of managers we have who are soooo out of sync with their own workforce! If I feel anything for you, it is pity..and at least you made me laugh.
Best wishes Swiss Toni

Hotel Mode, Thank you for your concerns regarding the attitude of some BA cabin crew. Are you seriously trying to tell us, that in EVERY DAY of your life, you please EVERY ONE?? If the answer is yes, I can only think you are lying. I do my job, to the best of my abilities that I was employed for. I enjoy interaction with my passengers, (makes the time go quicker for a start!) People get off my flights, and say goodbye as if to a long lost friend. Honest they do. That also includes the last time I was delayed for 24 hrs, and missed my own birthday party!
Just as there can be sullen cabin crew, there are certain passengers that can never be appeased. The last one that springs to mind, is a gentleman in club, who when told we did not have that certain wine on board that day, (menu said A OR B), he wripped up his menu, told me to take his tray away, and sulked the rest of the journey! GEEEZ..and this guy was probably some captain of industry somewhere! BUT, his attitude did not affect my treatment of the rest of my passengers. There is only certain number of times/ways one can lick arse. Guess who felt like a P@@@K when he got off? Me or him? Hmmm...live and learn I guess. regards CB

[overstress]

Hmmm...
This seems to have turned into a CC blowing sunshine up themselves thread.

The point was that management have hosed money at cc fot turning up to work and doing their jobs.

Someone mentioned the HEL standover. This is not untypical of the fact that you get a lot more for your money out of BA S/H pilots than you do from the cc.

Some (I stress some) crew who are posting prolifically on this forum don't seem to recognise that the qualifications required to do ther job are:

nothing

the training is

a few weeks

the experience required to be an 'in charge' member by the CAA is

1 yr

If BA cc were benchmarked there would be a sudden glut of second-hand Boxsters, Audi TTs and Mercedes CLKs in the Thames Valley Autotrader.

Anyone who doesn't believe that, just loiter on the Northern Perimeter road for a while!

[DarkStar]

Overstress - can't agree with you more! I was unfortunate enough to be undertaking a course at Cranebank whereupon blasting through the wall came Tina Turners 'Simply the Best'. Apparantly, it was the first day of a new CC intake!! It was sickening to hear them whooping it up while we were undergoing an examination. Anyone.... and I mean anyone, can be trained to be CC. Bring on the bench-marking!

Also agree about your comments about their luxury cars, there was a rumour that any car parked in the CC carpark which was over two years old would quietly towed away and crushed.

When Size and Shape 2 was announced a senior CSD was seen sobbing just by the coffee bar in Compass, a Manager tried to comfort him saying 'not to worry, you'll be o.k, you've got plenty going for you' to which he sniffed, I'm not worried about my job, I've done plenty of years, its that I've just had to pay for my own Latte!'

[overstress]

Darkstar

Hope you managed self-restraint!

To any BA CC reading this and my posting above, please don't get me wrong. The vast majority do a fine job. My comments are directed at those who genuinely do not realise how well-off they are in comparative terms.

The telling feature is the vast number of v senior crew (in age, I mean)

In many other airlines, there are very few crew in their late 30s. Why are there so many in BA? It is because they are paid at the very highest levels for CC in the UK. This is a fact, it is not a point of envy, why as a pilot should I envy them, or even resent their levels of pay.

It is simply the fact that they are very well off as crew, some do not recognise this.

Some of their restrictive practices drive me to despair, despair for the future of the company in that crew can have a huge influence on the profitability of the company and they do not recognise this. See my comments earlier on the comments of newly-joined ex-Midland crew who have the guilty air of kids let loose in the sweetshop. They at least have the decency to recognise that they are very much better off in a company which remunerates its CC very well.

The bringing of CC management under the umbrella of flt ops is long overdue and is a nettle which RE must grasp unless he is to preside over the slow bleeding to death of a once-great company.

[Calle Belle]

Jealousy and envy are a terrible thing...
If I believed everything I read on here, I would give up my salary and work for nothing..since it seems, it is PURELY my wages that is stopping the comany being on the breadline or doing well...lol...how shortsighted are the suits in waterside?